Macron Urges Pope To Get Biden & Putin To Dialogue On Ukraine
French President Emmanuel Macron revealed in an interview with Le Point that he urged Pope Francis in a meeting at the Vatican to attempt to arrange direct dialogue between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in an effort to make peace in Ukraine.
The interview was published the day after Macron met with the Pope at the Vatican Monday. “I encouraged Pope Francis to call Vladimir Putin and [head of the Russian Orthodox Church] Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, but also Joe Biden,” Macron began.
“We need the United States to sit at the table to promote the peace process in Ukraine,” Macron continued. “Joe Biden has a real relationship of trust with the Pope. The Pope can have an influence on him for American re-engagement in Haiti and Ukraine.” Biden is the second sitting US president in history who is Roman Catholic, with the first being John F. Kennedy.
On Tuesday in addressing a peace conference hosted at the Vatican, Francis compared the current conflict in Ukraine and nuclear-armed super powers lined up on either side of it to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 60 years ago:
In his address to several thousand people, delivered after various religious groups prayed separately, Francis decried today’s “bleak scenario, where, sad to say, the plans of potent world leaders make no allowance for the just aspirations of peoples”.
Referring to the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Francis said: “Today, in fact, something we dreaded and hoped never to hear of again is threatened outright: the use of atomic weapons, which even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki continued wrongly to be produced and tested.”
France’s Macron has remained among the few world leaders to directly engage Putin, having held a series of phone calls with the Russian president throughout the invasion, as part of efforts to find a diplomatic way forward toward ending the war.
As for Macron’s suggestion to the Pope to get both sides to the table in direct dialogue, the Kremlin responded positively to the possibility, with Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying Macron’s goal appears genuinely “aimed at finding a possible resolution” to the Ukraine crisis, according to state-backed media.
“That said, the remarks said nothing about anyone calling President Zelensky and settling the issue of the legal system, which currently forbids any talks with Russia,” he added. Zelensky previously stated he would not engaged Moscow in ceasefire talks so long as Putin remains president, something he said has been codified into Ukrainian law.
This is the second German court ruling in a week backing the conservative AfD party…
In a number of German states, the country’s main conservative opposition party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is already listed as a “potential threat” to democracy and is being monitored by security services. However, in Bavaria, the party just won at least a partial victory against similar surveillance efforts.
The Administrative Court of Munich has blocked the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s main domestic intelligence service, from monitoring the Bavarian state chapter of the AfD party. In other states like Thuringia, the BfV can read all emails and monitor the telephone calls of all AfD members without a warrant, but the Munich judges blocked these methods in Bavaria. The judges found that such an operation “severely interferes with the party’s activities with the risk of clandestine spying.”
In addition, the BfV is prohibited from making public statements claiming the AfD was threatening democracy or the German constitution.
There is “the danger of an impairment of the equal chances of the party in particular regarding the future federal state election campaign,” the court ruled. However, the party must accept “at least to be observed from publicly accessible sources.”
Currently, there is a push to list the entire AfD as suspects in an anti-democracy case at the federal level, essentially putting the entire party structure under surveillance. In addition, politicians from a wide range of parties, including the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, the Left, and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), have pushed for an outright ban on their electoral rival during a time when, according to polling, the AfD has exploded in popularity,
However, the Munich court only issued an interim ruling, and proceedings are still ongoing. The judges indicated that they want to “carry out their own evaluation of the material submitted, which comprises several thousand pages.”
The Bavarian Interior Ministry can also appeal the decision within the next two weeks.
The AfD expressed its support for the decision.
“Neither in the pre-trial proceedings nor in court could the Office for the Protection of the Constitution substantiate its reasons for the surveillance,” the state AfD branch wrote.
The party’s state organization chairman and Bundestag representative Stephan Protschka also accused the BfV of being “incapable of any orderly record keeping.”
“In court, they presented 4,000 chaotically pieced together documents, some of them illegible and unsorted, which they dumped as justification,” Protschka said.
The BfV lost a similar case in Hessen last week, with the court in Wiesbaden ordering the BfV to halt investigations into the AfD.
Both Bavaria and Hessen will see elections take place next year, raising fears among the left that the AfD could make major gains. In Bavaria, the AfD has improved from 10 to 12 percent, according to the latest polling.
“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”
There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police and federal agents armed to the teeth.
All is not as it seems.
Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.
This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.
Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.
Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.
In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.
In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.
In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.
In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”
And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.
When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.
Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”
When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.
A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long.
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.
Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.
As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”
We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.
From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.
The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, pandemics, mass shootings, etc.).
They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.
They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.
Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates as fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.
This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.
When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”
We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. A concern for human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.
Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.
So where does that leave us?
The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.
Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.
When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hypno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”
In other words: we need to get active and take a stand for what’s really important.
Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.
All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.
Wake up, America.
If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.
US Ready To Protect Asian Allies With Nukes, Biden Official Says In Tokyo
It’s a hugely alarming scenario when world leaders and government officials representing nuclear-armed superpowers appear to increasingly be spouting nuclear rhetoric and warnings in an almost casual manner.
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Tuesday said Washington is ready to protect its Asian allies using nukes if they came under attack, spelling out the US would deploy its “nuclear, conventional and missile defense.”
Washington “will use the full range of US defense capabilities to defend our allies, including nuclear, conventional and missile defense capabilities,” the deputy secretary told a Tuesday meeting with South Korean and Japanese officials, ahead of a series of talks this week. She hailed America’s commitment to defense of Seoul and Tokyo as “ironclad”.
The region is currently on edge after early this week South Korea announced that its intelligence concluded Pyongyang has finalized preparations for what will be its first nuclear test in a half-decade. These warnings of an imminent North Korean nuclear test have been growing louder since early August, with the US backing Seoul’s assessment.
Sherman in her comments condemned the recent series of ballistic missile launches by North Korea, calling the record number of tests over the course of the year “deeply irresponsible, dangerous, and destabilizing.”
One of the more provocative among the latest tests saw a ballistic missile soar over Japan itself. The Asian officials meeting with Sherman in Tokyo agreed that Pyongyang is “creating serious tension on the Korean Peninsula.”
U.S. to cooperate with South Korea, Japan for Taiwan’s self-defense – Dep. Secy. of State Wendy Sherman.
I didn’t hear Sherman’s counterparts second that assertion. Also haven’t heard Seoul and Tokyo have policies to provide for Taiwan’s self-defense. https://t.co/TgUgpS83As
Patrol ships from the north and south exchanged warning fire along the shared marine-time border on Monday in but the latest sign tensions are at boiling point. The north is meanwhile angry that the US military has in the last month stepped up its presence in waters off the peninsula, while participating in joint military drills with South Korea.
Forget Musk’s Tunnels, Early Tesla Investor Seeds First-Ever eVTOL Car
We’ve come across many companies debuting futuristic designs of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Some have even tested (see: here & here) and/or have begun selling eVTOLs on the market (see: here). But when it comes to a driveable eVTOL, Alef Aeronautics has a revolutionary design.
California-based Alef is the only eVTOL with street-driving capabilities. Alef’s Model A prototype was first unveiled last Wednesday.
The Alef Model A is not a distant dream, expected to enter series production with first deliveries in 4Q25. The cost of the eVTOL that drives on roads and soars over traffic starts at around $300,000. It has a driving range of 200 miles and flies about 110 miles.
Reuters said, “The unusual appearance—which features a body that flips on its side to become the wing after lift-off—is just one aspect that attracted Tim Draper, an early investor in Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc and SpaceX whose Draper Associates Fund V has backed Alef with $3 million in seed money.”
Draper told Reuters via email: “The design is extraordinary. The sides of the car become the wings when the plane goes horizontal.”
In a company release, Alef’s CEO, Jim Dukhovny, said the eVTOL is a “modern solution for both urban and rural transportation needs in the 21st century because it is the fastest and most convenient transport ever created from the point of origin to the final destination. By enabling consumers to choose driving or flying mode, the Alef flying car allows the optimal path depending on road conditions, weather and infrastructure.”
Dukhovny told CNET: “We can actually solve all traffic in the world for the next hundred years.”
… and there goes Elon Musk’s idea of building tunnels to reduce major cities’ traffic congestion problems.
Putin’s ‘Viceroy Of The Donbas’ & Top Confidant Seen As Likely Successor To Presidency
During the opening months of the Ukraine war top US generals and officials went on record predicting that the conflict is likely to drag on for “years” to come. For example a headline in March observed it will turn into a quagmire, and that lawmakers at the Capitol were briefed “it is likely to last 10, 15, or 20 years.”
And now, fast-forward to the invasion’s eight-month mark, where it does look to be settling in to a protracted stalemated situation. All the while speculation over the future of “Putin’s war” and even his personal health abounds, with sensational headlines such as this in the UK Times this month: “Putin at 70: isolated, irrational and fearing for his health.”
Speculation over whether the 70-year old Putin will stay in power (and good health) long enough to see his own war in neighboring Ukraine through to a conclusion has naturally given way to questions over a potential successor for leadership, at a moment US and EU sanctions and global condemnation have left Russia more isolated than ever, and at the same time power under Putin’s administration has become the most centralized since the collapse of the USSR.
A fresh report in The Telegraph this week suggests that a career politician and Kremlin insider is likely Putin’s top pick to inherit power, as he was singularly hailed for overseeing the ‘successful’ annexation of the four occupied regions of Ukraine. “For 60-year-old Sergei Kiriyenko, this was the culmination of a mission that he’d been given by Putin,”the report introduces. “Everybody was celebrating and he’d played a major role in the enlargement of Russia.”
“Kiriyenko was in charge of referendums in these regions even if it was the FSB that managed them in the end,” said think tank analyst and Russia-watcher Tatiana Stanovaya. The Telegraph observes, “And now, perhaps mischievously, Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military spy chief, has said that Putin is even lining up the loyal Mr Kiriyenko as a successor.”
The report gives a further snapshot of Kiriyenko’s early political career, who in the late 1990’s served as prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, as follows:
Nobody knows the paranoid Putin’s succession plans but the Russian leader trusts Mr Kiriyenko, who has made the philosophical journey from supporting Western liberalism in the 1990s to promoting Putin’s authoritarianism now.
A technocrat and a follower of the philosopher-founder of the Moscow Methodological Circle, which believes that people and society can be programmed, Mr Kiriyenko has had to rely on patronage from more powerful Russians to make his career.
He was appointed Russia’s youngest prime minister at the age of 35 in 1998 by then-president Boris Yeltsin on the suggestion of Boris Nemtsov, the poster boy of Russian liberalism who was murdered on a bridge next to the Kremlin in 2015.
Currently he serves as First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia – a role he’s occupied all the way back to 2016, when he was appointed by Putin. Some European outlets have lately dubbed him the ‘Viceroy of the Donas’ for his role in the annexation votes in eastern Ukraine.
Kiriyenko is also considered the man who is personally responsible for Putin’s path to the presidency, being the first to put him forward to head up the FSB intelligence agency under Yeltsin in 1998.
France24 recently featured the following description of Kiriyenko: “The bald and stern-faced 60-year-old entered Putin’s deepest inner circle in 2016, when he was named first deputy head of the presidential office.”
His influence has only grown alongside Putin’s in the meantime, as France24 writes further, “Since then, and thanks to the convenient catch-all title he was given, Putin has been able to task him with any mission he desires, including last week’s sham referendums in the disputed regions in Ukraine, according to American geopolitical think tank GlobalSecurity.org.”
As for Kiriyenko playing the role of personal envoy overseeing political assimilation of occupied regions of Ukraine, this has seen some very “hands on” moments. The Telegraph notes that recently, “Videos show him inspecting damage to the Crimea Bridge and unveiling a statue of a patriotic granny in Mariupol, the Ukraine city that Russian forces had bombed to the ground.”
However, the report also concludes there are reasons to think that his power won’t outlast Putin’s own… “But Mr Kiriyenko doesn’t have his own power base and no influence within Russia’s powerful security services. His closeness to Putin is a strength and weakness, said Prof Petrov.”
Petrov told the publication, “He is strong now because of his proximity to Putin but with Putin weakening this could change,” as it remains that Kiriyenko “is a tool, a loyal tool for his boss.”
Newly published federal data reveals that close to a hundred individuals listed on the FBI terror watchlist have been apprehended at the Southern border in the last year, a record high and a huge uptick in recent months.
The Customs and Border Protection agency data, released without fanfare on Friday night, reveals that so far this year 98 individuals apprehended attempting to get into the U.S. at the southern border were suspected terrorists or closely affiliated with terrorist organizations.
BREAKING ~ FRI PM DUMP ~ @CBP rls record-breaking migrant encounter numbers for Sept – 227,547 – bringing the FY22 total to: 2,378,944 – the highest ever in history.
The figure has jumped from just 27 in early April.
In September alone, 20 terror suspects were arrested on the border, up from 12 in August.
The data was highlighted by Fox News reporter Bill Melugin in a report this week, as he noted that the figure is almost four times the previous five years combined:
BREAKING: There were 20 arrests of known or suspected terrorists on the FBI’s terror watchlist at the border in September, according to new CBP numbers.
FY’22 ended with 98 terror watchlist arrests.
That’s almost quadruple the previous 5 years combined.
Previous data from 2019 indicated that zero terror suspects had been encountered at the border.
If you would like to view the numbers for yourself, here is a CBP link to the data. Scroll down to the “Terrorist Screening Dataset Encounters”, and look at Border Patrol arrests (in between ports of entry), OFO is ports of entry which is CBP, not BP. https://t.co/RqigZLtdrt
As Melugin previously highlighted, CBP sources say there have been more than half a million ‘gotaways’ this year alone (that figure is now close to 600,000), and close to a million since the beginning of last year, begging the question how many of them were on the terror watchlist and are now roaming around the country freely?
The number of migrants encountered at the border now stands at almost 2.4 million for the year, with over 227,000 in September alone.
BORDER RECAP
– 227,547 migrant encounters in September ‘22, highest Sept. ever recorded.
– 2.37 million encounters in FY’22, the highest fiscal year ever recorded.
– 856 migrant deaths at border in FY’22, highest ever recorded.
– 599,000 *known* gotaways in FY’22.@FoxNews
Responding to the latest data release, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement Monday “Our adversaries know they can enter our country through our failed border.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the top Republican on the Senate homeland security appropriations subcommittee, added that the Border Patrol is “overrun” and the “consequences of these lax enforcement actions should concern every single American.”
In addition, the new data shows that Feds seized close to 15 thousand pounds of fentanyl from smugglers attempting to get it across the border, seven times as much compared to five years ago.
One port of entry, one weekend. 5 major fentanyl smuggling busts by CBP. https://t.co/t78zlMmYqc
HAPPENING NOW: @TxDPS disrupted a human smuggling attempt on IH 35 in Cotulla. The driver attempted to smuggle 60+ illegal immigrants concealed inside a dump truck. Driver arrested & illegal immigrants turned over to #USBP – more details to come. #OperationLoneStarpic.twitter.com/7AbYwP2AFg
The driver, seen smirking in a photo, was an 18-year-old U.S. citizen, per @TxDPS. They say he had 10 bundles of what turned out to be 240lbs of marijuana. The other drug smugglers successfully made it back to Mexico without apprehension. @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/s6cQMFBjVu
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Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio stood his ground on a debate stage at the Lake Worth campus of Palm Beach College. His opponent is seasoned Democratic lawmaker Val Demings, a black congresswoman and former police chief, and the discussion had turned to abortion rights – terrain that Democrats believe favor them and give Demings and other Senate candidates a chance to alter the expected outcome of the 2022 midterms.
“I’m 100% pro-life not because I want to deny anyone their rights but because I believe that innocent human life is worthy of the protection under the law,” Rubio said. While noting he has supported legislation that includes exceptions for rape, incest, and the mother’s health, he then went on offense, arguing that “the extremist on abortion in this campaign” is his opponent.
Like Democrats around the country, Demings had been running ads hitting her Republican opponent on abortion for more than a month. During their debate, Rubio delivered his rebuttal. “She supports no restrictions, no limitations of any kind – she’s against a four-month ban, she voted against a five-month ban,” he said. “She supports taxpayer-funded abortion on demand for any reason any time up until the moment of birth.”
Demings, the former chief of police in Orlando who investigated rape and incest cases while in uniform, was equally forceful in her response. She accused Rubio of being dishonest with Florida voters because he had previously said he personally opposes all abortions without exceptions, including for victims of rape and incest. “How gullible do you think Florida voters are?” she retorted.
Both sides strongly articulated their points and defended their views. But Rubio’s decision to come out swinging won rave reviews from pro-life groups. For months, these advocates have pressed Republicans to fight fire with fire when it comes to abortion because, they argued, Americans’ positions on the issue are much more nuanced than many topline poll results have shown.
“It’s a basic rule of politics that you identify the contrast with your opponent, and you leverage it to your advantage,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told RealClearPolitics. “I think that after a little bit of clearing of the throat, our candidates are doing an excellent job. And in places where they don’t do that the abortion issue may get the better of them, but in places where they do, they’ll gain the advantage.”
Yet, if this summer’s headlines were to be believed, Republicans were doing far more serious faltering than minor throat-clearing.
“In sprint to November, Democrats seize on shifting landscape over abortion: No issue has upended the battle for Congress and state races so abruptly,” the Washington Post proclaimed in early September.
“‘Pink Wave’ Poised to Upend Republican Midterm Prospects,” proclaimed U.S. News & World Report, citing a surge in women planning to vote in November.
In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s late June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Democrats aggressively took the fight to Republicans, many of whom either downplayed their anti-abortion stances or sought to avoid the topic altogether. Democrats were especially jubilant in late August after Republicans lost a special election in a swing New York district in which their candidate laid out clear battle lines on abortion.
“Republicans can say good-bye to their ‘Red Wave’ because voters are clearly coming out in force to elect a pro-choice majority to Congress this November,” declared Sean Patrick Maloney, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. .
In the final sprint toward November, however, Maloney himself is in a more competitive race than expected, against GOP Assemblyman Mike Lawler in a newly redrawn district. Nearly every poll shows that voters’ concerns over inflation and the economy are greatly surpassing any other issue in the race, including abortion.
A few weeks ago, the political dynamic shifted as inflation continued to climb, and many economists predicted that the economy is on the brink of a recession. Several prominent voices on the left, including veteran strategist James Carville and Sen. Bernie Sanders, started warning fellow Democrats that their hyper-focus on abortion could backfire.
“It’s a good issue. But if you just sit there and they’re pummeling you on crime and pummeling you on cost of living, you’ve got to be more aggressive than just yelling abortion every other word,” Carville told the Associated Press.
There was plenty of criticism on the right too, as anti-abortion groups griped that GOP candidates were overreacting to the Dobbs decision by cowering in fear and hoping the issue would somehow just go away.
Dannenfelser and others pointed to what they cast as encouraging data from a late June Harvard CAPS/Harris poll on the question of where Americans stand on late-term abortions. Even amid the huge media outcry over the overturning of Roe, 72% of Americans agreed that abortion should be banned no later than 15 weeks, while only 10% said it should be allowed up until viability, when the fetus can live outside the womb – or approximately 24 weeks.
Anti-abortion advocates argue that the findings directly undermine the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would enshrine Roe v. Wade protections into law and make abortion legal until the point of viability. Every House Democrat except one voted for the bill in the wake of Dobbs, but the measure sank in the Senate, where Republicans opposed it.
After the poll results were released, abortion opponents pressed Republicans to turn the tables and force Democrats to define precisely when during pregnancy they would draw the line and say abortion should be barred. “If candidates support laws that permit abortion all the way up to birth, they are out of step with the American public, and Republicans should not be afraid to call them out on it,” Dannenfelser wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in late August.
Over the last month, J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, as well as Rep. Ted Budd, GOP candidates running for Senate in Ohio, Arizona, and North Carolina, respectively, have been doing just that – vigorously defended their pro-life positions while calling on their Democratic opponents to define theirs more precisely.
“[Ryan] says he wants to codify Roe … he voted for a piece of legislation that would have overturned Roe and required abortion on demand at 40 weeks for fully elective reasons,” Vance said during his debate with Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan in mid-October. “He also voted for a piece of legislation that would have prevented doctors from providing medical care to babies who survived botched abortions.”
All three – Vance, Masters, and Budd – have remained ahead by roughly the same margin or have strengthened their standing in the polls. Other GOP candidates – from those running for governor to others trying to knock off Democratic House incumbents – have also sharpened their anti-abortion rhetoric in recent weeks. In some key battleground states, however, the abortion issue has put Republican candidates at a disadvantage.
During the Georgia Senate debate last week, football great Herschel Walker took Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock to task for what he cast as extreme abortion positions. But the issue was already causing Walker trouble after a former girlfriend accused him of asking her to have an abortion and paying for it. Walker has denied the story, but his standing in the polls has ticked down a few points from when the story first broke.
Adam Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general who is trying to unseat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in the decidedly pro-choice Silver State, is running a careful, focused campaign on the economy. Instead of pressing his opponent to define her limits on abortion, he’s accusing Democrats of mistakenly using all their energy and resources to make the midterms an abortion referendum when voters are far more worried about the skyrocketing cost of living.
Laxalt has promised to oppose a national abortion ban and said Nevada will remain a pro-choice state, arguing that the state level is where abortion should be decided. Aside from a few races, however, most Republicans appear to be finding their footing on abortion, while Democrats show no indication of taking their foot off the gas.
Three weeks ahead of the election, President Biden promised to codify Roe v. Wade if Democrats win the midterms – a pledge he could only keep if the party wins several more seats in the Senate and avoids the off-year midterm losses that so many of his predecessors have suffered. Ahead of his speech, Planned Parenthood, EMILY’s List and NARAL sent out a press release reminding reporters that they had pledged to spend an unprecedented $150 million mobilizing and energizing voters around the country “at levels never seen.”
Abortion rights activists argue that Republicans like Rubio and other unabashedly pro-life conservatives are throwing up smokescreens by focusing on late-term abortions to distract from their previously stated beliefs that there should be no exceptions for rape, incest, or the mother’s health.
“What they’re doing now is a clever political trick to try to change the subject and say a little bit about abortion and just move on,” Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for EMILY’s List, told RCP. “I hope that voters see through it and understand that, and we’re working to make sure they understand the real positions of people [in office or campaigning for office] and what they actually plan to do.”
Late-term abortions occur in a very small number of cases that usually involve “incredibly tragic medical issues and decisions that women need to make on their own with their doctors,” she said, adding that the decision comes down to whether you want the government involved in those decisions. Even if economic issues are front and center in voters’ minds, Democrats say they will keep fighting on abortion because it helps turn out the vote in an election year when their party is facing severe headwinds.
“We were facing a significant enthusiasm gap, and the Dobbs decision changed that almost overnight,” Reynolds said. “It’s energized people who maybe wouldn’t have otherwise turned out … it reminded us that you’ve got to get out there and fight in every election. People were talking about a huge Republican wave, and I don’t think we’re going to see that.”
Only the election returns – and the exit polls – will tell us for sure, but for now, both sides are using whatever abortion ammunition they have at their disposal. While Democrats up and down the ballot continue hammering away on the issue in television ads and debates, many Republicans are finally standing their ground, firing off their salvos with new confidence.
After Sending Out 240,000 Unverified Ballots, Pennsylvania Now Warns Of ‘Delays’ Counting Midterm Votes
Here we go again…
Just one day after 15 Pennsylvania House Republicans sent a letter to acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman demanding to know why 240,000 unverified ballots had been mailed out (“which, according to the law, must be set aside and not counted for the 2022 General Election unless the voter produces lD,” the lawmakers wrote), Chapman revealed that there will likely be delays posting the results after the midterm elections.
“It’s really important for us to get accurate information about the election process in Pennsylvania,” Chapman said during a virtual conference, where she said it would likely take ‘several days’ to count and certify the votes.
“So voters and the public know that when there are delays in counting, it doesn’t mean that there’s anything nefarious happening. It’s just what the law is in Pennsylvania.”
According to Chapman, the delays would be attributed to poll workers not being able to pre-canvas, or count mail-in ballots prior to election day.
She also encouraged voters to go ahead and send in their ballots, contrary to Republican messaging which urged voters to hold onto their mail-in ballots and turn them in to their local board of elections on election day – which Chapman said could (somehow) cause voters to become disenfranchised.
“We have heard that there’s messaging out there in Pennsylvania, as far as instructing voters to hold onto their mail-in ballots,” she said, adding “As part of our voter education campaign, we encourage voters to request that mail-in ballot now and return it as soon as possible. We don’t want voters to delay.”
Chapman took the opportunity to convey concerns she says stem from ‘misinformation’ – threats to interrupt voting and calls to delay the sending of mail-in ballots.
While she didn’t detail a specific incident, Chapman said there have been reports of threats aimed at the voting process throughout the state. She promised that her office has worked to investigate any threat made toward a free and fair election.
“Since I’ve been in office in January, we have constantly met with the FBI and Homeland Security just to talk through what the current threat landscape is and tools that we can give our counties to make sure that they have physical security protection as well as cyber security protection,” she said.
“So it’s been great to partner with both the federal and state law enforcement organizations. We are in constant communication with them and it’s a situation that we are monitoring,” Chapman added. –Lehigh Valley News
According to Chapman, over 1.2 million mail-in ballots have been requested across the state, and 43% – or 556,000, have been returned.
So does that mean that nearly 25% of mail-in ballots sent out were unverified?
This is the latest from Harris Kupperman, founder of Praetorian Capital, a hedge fund focused on using macro trends to guide stock selection. Mr. Kupperman is also the chief adventurer at Adventures in Capitalism, a website that details his investments and travels.
I published recent thoughts from Harris just days ago, in a post outlining his thoughts on why the Fed has backed themselves into a corner they can’t get out of.
Harris is one of my favorite Twitter follows and I find his opinions – especially on macro and commodities – to be extremely resourceful. I’m certain my readers will find the same. I was excited when he offered up his latest investor letter to Fringe Finance, which is published in part below.
Harris On Markets and Macro
I have genuinely been surprised at the vigor with which the Federal Reserve has raised rates in their campaign to quash inflation. For my entire investing career, the Fed has been dovish, standing by and ready to reassure speculators at every market gyration. For the first time in my career, they’re actively targeting the stock market in an effort to create a recession and reduce the “wealth effect” when it comes to consumer spending. This is a terrifying policy change that was unexpected by most market observers—including myself.
At the same time, I feel that they have no real heart for this campaign. As political animals, they’ll be forced to pivot after they succeed in breaking something. Unfortunately, breaking something may lead to scary outcomes in the shorter term and we’ve kept our exposures at reduced levels until it is clear that they’re ready to pivot. When they do pivot, I believe that energy will be the primary beneficiary as both oil and uranium currently exhibit structural deficits that will be difficult to overcome absent substantial increases in capital spending.
In fact, I think that the magnitude of the movements in energy pricing will stun people who are accustomed to gradual changes in commodity price regimes. If anything, the volatility in European energy prices ought to be a wake-up call for all market participants. It would seem that with structural deficits and rapidly growing demand, the rules have adjusted, and many investors are unprepared for the change. To me, this creates opportunity.
Unfortunately for the Fed, higher energy prices will feed into higher structural inflation levels and at some point, the Fed will have to decide if they want to continue fighting inflation (which is likely impossible to quash outside of a global depression that dramatically reduces energy demand) or if they want to adjust their mandate and accept an increased level of inflation. Despite them clinging to their inflation-fighting mandate all year, I believe they have no desire to inflict a depression on voters. They’ll eventually pivot and accept dramatically higher inflation levels, while continuing to subsidize interest rates to avert the depression that they seem fixated on creating. As a result, we have continued to increase our exposure to US housing on this pullback, as that will be a prime beneficiary of this set of macroeconomic outcomes.
Thoughts On Portfolio Valuations
Despite only experiencing a -2.87% net decline (performance net of fees) in our fund since the start of the year, many of our largest positions have experienced far more dramatic declines and now represent unusual value. As a way of demonstrating the magnitude of the declines, as of the end of the third quarter, these are our top 5 positions and the declines experienced from their peak price points during 2022.
Now, you should be asking yourself how it is possible that so many positions have declined dramatically, yet the fund hasn’t performed demonstrably worse. The answer would be a combination of continued gains from the Event-Driven book, realized gains on a number of profitable investments and loss mitigation strategies when trading around core positions. Additionally, we did not own BLDR or BNO at the start of the year, so they are new additions, purchased at depressed prices. Absent these factors, our returns for the year would have been a good deal worse. While the percentage decline from the peak price in a year, is a somewhat arbitrary way to think about a portfolio’s return, I think it is important to point out that the portfolio itself is doing a whole lot better than its larger components. Additionally, the magnitude of the declines from the peak prices is likely indicative of the relative value inherent in our portfolio.
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As an absolute performance vehicle, I believe that a benchmark would be a foolish metric to use when referencing this fund’s performance. At the same time, it’s hard to ignore the fact that many global equity and bond markets are down dramatically, and our fund is down a good deal less despite being more than 100% net long for most of the year and rarely utilizing shorts or hedges. I believe this is due to my constant focus on sectors that are positively inflecting with strong macro tailwinds. History has shown that despite what happens in global economics or geopolitics, there is always a bull market somewhere. The key is to identify those bull markets and then find the components within those markets that offer exponential upside with a reduced opportunity for a permanent loss of capital. Discipline in this regard often trumps simple valuation, as cheap stocks can always get cheaper. Meanwhile, those with strong tailwinds rarely stay cheap for long.
As a result of focusing on inflecting trends, we’ve side-stepped a good deal of the carnage in global risk markets, while capturing returns from the Event-Driven book. As a result, I think that we’ve set ourselves up for the continuation of the various trends that we are most fixated on. While history only somewhat repeats when it comes to the markets, my experience has been that strong trends often struggle to produce price positive performance during periods of overall market weakness. Then, when there is a pause in the decline of the overall market, those positions that declined the least with the broader market, tend to lead the next charge higher. The overall strength of many of our positions is indicative to me that we may be setting up for a similar explosive move higher in our portfolio positions when the market eventually bottoms.
For now, my focus is on avoiding unforced errors, keeping exposure down and being prepared to dramatically increase our exposure to inflation assets when the Fed finally pauses in its rate cycle.
Russian Securities
During last quarter’s letter, I gave an update on our Russian securities positions and noted that we had moved them into a side-pocket and marked them all at zero. Nothing has changed regarding the side-pocket or the mark on the positions. However, we did succeed in removing the GDR wrapper from 3 of our Russian positions and now own Russian shares. Our fourth position is a Cypriot company and thus far, we have not been capable of removing the GDR wrapper. Fortunately, it does not appear to be at the same risk of disappearing if we do not remove the wrapper.
While it may require some time until we can liquidate these positions, we believe that we’ll ultimately realize sizable gains on them.
Position Review (top 5 position weightings at quarter end from largest to smallest)
Uranium Basket (Entities holding physical uranium along with production and exploration companies)
It may take some time still, but I believe that society will eventually settle on nuclear power as a compromise solution for baseload power generation. This will come at a time when there is a deficit of uranium production, compared with growing demand. As aboveground stocks are consumed, uranium prices should appreciate towards the marginal cost of production. Additionally, there is currently an entity named Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (U-U – Canada) that is aggressively issuing shares through an At-The-Market offering, or ATM, in order to purchase uranium (we are long this entity). I believe that these uranium purchases will accelerate the price realization function by sequestering much of the available above-ground stockpile at a time when utilities have run down their inventories and need substantial purchases to re-stock. The combination of these factors ought to lead to a dramatic increase in the price of uranium as it will take at least two years for incremental supply to come online—even if the re-start decision were made today.
While most of our exposure to physical uranium is within the Sprott trust, because it allows us to express this view with reduced risk, we also own shares of Kazatomprom (KAP – UK). I am well aware that mining is one of the riskiest businesses out there, but Kazatomprom is the lowest-cost diversified producer globally, with incredible scale in what is a highly-consolidated industry. At the same time, I recognize that we take on certain risks when owning a company engaged in mineral extraction, especially in a country like Kazakhstan that can be politically unstable at times. That said, I believe that the recent change in government will do little to impact the operating environment in Kazakhstan, though the tax rate may expand moderately.
Ironically, uranium will be a prime beneficiary of sanctions on Russia as Russia is one of the world’s largest enrichers of uranium. As the West is forced to enrich more of the uranium that ultimately goes into reactors, underfeeding of tails will flip to an overfeeding of tails. The net effect could be anywhere between 10% and 30% of the global supply of uranium disappearing—which may dramatically accelerate the timing of my thesis while increasing the ultimate magnitude of the upward swing in uranium prices.
Energy Services Basket (Positions Not Currently Disclosed)
In 2020 when oil traded below zero, drilling activity ground to a halt and many energy service providers declared bankruptcy. Many of these businesses had teetered on the verge of bankruptcy for years due to reduced demand and over-leveraged balance sheets. The bankruptcies led to consolidation and reduced future industry capacity, removing future competition in the recovery.
With oil prices now at multi-year highs, I believe that demand for drilling and other services will recover. While producers have been slow to increase spending on exploration, despite dramatic recoveries in energy prices, I believe that this only extends the timing on the thesis. In the end, the only way to reduce energy prices is to see a dramatic increase in global oilfield services spending. Any postponement of this spending only leads to higher prices and more wealth transfer from the global economy to the oil producers, which will likely end up resulting in an increase in spending on exploration and production.
We purchased many of these positions at fractions of the equipment’s replacement cost, despite restored balance sheets and positive operating cash flow. As spending in the sector recovers, I believe that the potential for cash flow will become more apparent and this equipment will trade up to valuations closer to replacement cost.
Oil Futures, Futures and ETF Options and Call Spreads
I believe that years of reduced capital expenditures, along with ESG restricting capital access, combined with Western governments that are openly hostile to fossil fuels, have created an environment for dramatically higher oil prices. While we could purchase oil producers, I feel it is far more conservative to simply own the physical commodity itself. We own December 2025 oil futures, along with various futures calls and call spreads, an ETF and ETF call options and call spreads. I believe that this leveraged play on oil gives us the most upside to oil and ultimately inflation, while exposing us to reduced risk when compared to producers.
St. Joe (JOE – USA)
JOE owns approximately 175,000 acres in the Florida Panhandle. It has been widely known that JOE traded for a tiny fraction of its liquidation value for years, but without a catalyst, it was always perceived to be “dead money.”
Over the past few years, the population of the Panhandle has hit a critical mass where the Panhandle now has a center of gravity that is attracting people who want to live in one of the prettiest places in the country, with zero state income taxes and few of the problems of large cities.
The oddity of the current disdain for so-called “value investments” is that many of them are growing quite fast. I believe that JOE will grow revenue at 30% to 50% each year for the foreseeable future, with earnings growing at a much faster clip. Meanwhile, I believe the shares trade at a single-digit multiple on Adjusted Funds from Operations (AFFO) looking out to 2024, while substantial asset value is tossed in for free.
Besides the valuation, growth, and high Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) of the business, why else do I like JOE? For starters, land tends to appreciate rapidly during periods of high inflation— particularly an inflationary period where interest rates are likely to remain suppressed by the Federal Reserve. More importantly, I believe we are about to witness a massive population migration as people with means choose to flee big cities for somewhere peaceful.
I suspect that every convulsion of urban chaos and/or tax-the-rich scheming will launch JOE shares higher, and it will ultimately be seen as the way to “play” the stream of very wealthy refugees fleeing for somewhere better.
Builders FirstSource (BLDR – USA)
Builders FirstSource produces and distributes building materials, primarily for the home building industry. It trades at a low-single digit cash flow multiple on recent earnings and is using that cash flow to rapidly repurchase shares. One could say that the low multiple is due to peak cyclical earnings. I take a different view and believe that we’re in the early stages of a long-term housing boom caused by migration to low tax states along with a catch-up phase as home construction rates were below trendline over the past decade.
I believe that the US needs in excess of 1 million new single-family homes each year, just to provide for population growth, ignoring the other factors. As a result, this business does not appear to be at peak earnings; instead, I believe we are seeing a new baseline for earnings—though the earnings will be quite volatile—particularly if interest rates remain elevated or increase further.
Summary
In summary, during the third quarter of 2022, the fund experienced a pullback in many of its core positions. I have used this pullback to moderately increase a number of our positions, which has increased our overall exposure. Our exposure is a bit more concentrated in inflation, particularly in energy, than I’d normally expect it to be, but those are also my favorite themes. We’ve expressed this view through instruments like physical uranium, long-dated oil futures and futures options, energy equipment services companies, and land plays, which I believe should have a reduced risk of permanent impairment.
I also believe we are in the early stages of this inflationary boom and while there will be sizable volatility going forward, we are positioned well.
Harris’ Disclaimer:
Nothing set forth herein shall constitute an offer to sell any securities or constitute a solicitation of an offer to purchase any securities. Any such offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase shall be made only by formal offering documents for Praetorian Capital Fund LLC (the “Fund”) which include, among others, a confidential offering memorandum, operating agreement and subscription agreement. Such formal offering documents contain additional information not set forth herein, including information regarding certain risks of investing in the Fund, which are material to any decision to invest in the Fund.
No information is warranted by PCM or its affiliates or subsidiaries as to completeness or accuracy, express or implied, and is subject to change without notice. This document contains forward-looking statements, including observations about markets and industry and regulatory trends as of the original date of this document. Forward-looking statements may be identified by, among other things, the use of words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “believes,” or “estimates,” or the negatives of these terms, and similar expressions. Forwardlooking statements reflect PCM’s views as of such date with respect to possible future events. Actual results could differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of factors beyond PCM’s control. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. No party has an obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements in this document.
Opinions, estimates, and forward-looking statements in these materials constitute PCM’s judgment and should be considered current only as of the date of publication without regard to the date on which you may receive or access the information. PCM maintains the right to delete or modify information without prior notice. Statements made herein that are not attributed to a third-party source reflect the views and opinions of PCM.
Return targets or objectives, if any, are used for measurement or comparison purposes and only as a guideline for prospective investors to evaluate a particular investment program’s investment strategies and accompanying information. Targeted returns reflect subjective determinations by PCM based on a variety of factors, including, among others, internal modeling, investment strategy, prior performance of similar products (if any), volatility measures, risk tolerance and market conditions. Performance may fluctuate, especially over short periods. Targeted returns should be evaluated over the time period indicated and not over shorter periods. Targeted returns are not intended to be actual performance and should not be relied upon as an indication of actual or future performance.
The past performance of the Fund, or PCM, its principals, members, or employees is not indicative of future returns. The performance reflected herein and the performance for any given investor may differ due to various factors including, without limitation, the timing of subscriptions and withdrawals, applicable management fees and incentive allocations, and the investor’s ability to participate in new issues.
All references to a “net return” or “performance, net of fees” within this letter are for a net return of an investor that is subject to all standard fees and accrued incentive allocation, if any, at Praetorian Capital Fund LLC (“PCF”), as provided for in the PCF’s offering documents, and has been an investor in the PCF since the beginning of the current year or period.
There is no guarantee that PCM will be successful in achieving the Fund’s investment objectives. An investment in the Fund contains risks, including the risk of complete loss.
The investments discussed herein are not meant to be indicative or reflective of the portfolio of the fund. Rather, such examples are meant to exemplify PCM’s analysis for the fund and the execution of the fund’s investment strategy. While these examples may reflect successful trading, obviously not all trades are successful and profitable. As such, the examples contained herein should not be viewed as representative of all trades made by PCM.
QTR’s Disclaimer:I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important. I have no business relationship with Harris and am not an investor with him.
